


Resurrection

by Gairid



Category: Vampire Chronicles - All Media Types, Vampire Chronicles - Anne Rice
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-14
Updated: 2012-12-14
Packaged: 2017-11-21 03:39:52
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/593021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Gairid/pseuds/Gairid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Louis senses a change coming . Just a short reverie.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Resurrection

**Author's Note:**

  * For [robinchristine](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=robinchristine).



> Written for robinchristine who posted the prompt 'happy' in my LJ Prompt Challenge post, December 2012

Over a span of decades I had accustomed myself to solitude; it was not an awful thing in and of itself. I was solitary by nature when I was mortal and though I have not been human for quite a long time it has become apparent to me that many of the characteristics which defined my human personality have followed me into this life. Indeed, some of these traits are magnified to an alarming degree, though others, in grand evolutionary tradition, became vestigial and finally disappeared.

Solitude does not assume any specific emotion, but had I been asked about such a thing and been inclined to answer I would have said solitude suited me; certainly it suited a creature that sustained itself with human blood just as it suited a creature who believed the fiction he spun for himself—that he was no longer capable of very much in the way of feeling. After I parted ways with Armand, solitude was welcome. It did not envelop me completely for I kept a tentative grasp on the human world, allowing myself occasional contact, but for the most part I was alone and I preferred it that way. Now and then there was the diversion of those who hunted me still, though none of them ever came very close to actually finding me.

I cannot put a finger on just when I noticed a change—a shift in my internal landscape, so subtle as to remain unnoticed, except perhaps subconsciously. Then, a tremor in the ragged threads of my emotions, very faint, the barely heard echo of piano strings vibrating in response to a slammed door, a heavy tread in the far corner of a house. It was gradual and irregular enough that I did not know what to make of it, I only know that after some time had passed, I became aware of a curious lightening of the spirit.

As a result, my habits also changed. Instead of waiting for my thirst to build, I hunted early, often upon awakening, after which I spent the evenings among mortals, watching films at the cinema, moving among them in all their nighttime permutations. I visited the vampire bar known as Dracula’s Daughter—and though the majority of the patrons were mortal, I saw others of my kind, all of them young.

It was at that bar that I realized just how much had changed for I found myself intensely amused at messages on the walls threatening destruction to The Vampire Louis; I heard my name mentioned by some of the vampires in the bar, none of whom had the slightest notion of who or what I was. I have always suspected that the Hunting of Louis was just another way to pass an eternity of nights.

I found it surprising that I had somehow learned to conceal myself so well even in plain sight. Like the broadening sense of anticipation I carried with me, it had grown in unnoticed increments, unconscious trial and error. The thought carried with it a painful stab of guilt and with it a perfect flood of memory. I heard my own voice as clearly as if I’d spoken, accusing Lestat of holding back from me, of refusing to teach me anything at all. It never occurred to me then that he may not have had anything to teach, that perhaps he, too, had learned as he went along. I didn’t know it for certain, for he had kept more than the simple mechanics of what we were capable of to himself, but somehow in that moment it seemed very clear, very apparent. The spill of memory opened another door and I knew that what I had suspected for many years was true. Lestat was alive. Not only that, he was not far away.

Only a few nights later I found myself staring up at a bank of televisions in a wide store window, gazing at Lestat, his face animated and beautiful, the old confidence in place, perfectly framed with his impetuous sense of drama. I heard his voice through the glass and I was wholly suffused in a way I had not thought possible, not at all. It was not just happiness, not simple joy, it was as though I had been resurrected, my heart whole and beating, no longer withered in my chest. Everything in me yearned toward his image and I knew beyond a doubt that this was his answer to the challenge I’d laid out a decade earlier. More than that, this was his challenge to the rules, to all those that presumed to tell him what he could and could not do.

With an effort I turned from the flickering images, the unfamiliar feeling of a broad smile on my face.


End file.
